I found that one of the most enjoyable and interesting tasks of an agent's assistant is to submit the selections in response to a casting call, mainly because the agent's suggestions often baffled me, but also because I enjoy seeing the very earliest stages of a production.

This year's Academy Awards ceremony, at four hours long, required a similar amount of endurance as some of the heavier dramas nominated. The difference is that whilst Neil Patrick-Harris' role as compère offered welcome comic relief, the winners of the 'big four' provided little.

For studios, awards season is less about direct profit than it is a long-term exercise in branding. Awards help give the studio and actors a reputation for quality, allowing them to go on and sell bigger-budget films.

When I think of what I have given up: my freedom, my body, my youth, my sanity, my raw sexual magnitude and so on, I feel that I deserve at the very least to be thanked by those who have robbed me of these treasures.

As a Doctor who specialises in the analysis and the motivations of people - outside of work my favourite thing to do is to go to the cinema with my cousin (himself an award winning film maker) and then pouring over every detail of characters, story and plot lines.

Although I never came across the phrase "A-list" while at the agency, I began to think of the client list in terms of a "postal list". That is, ranking clients according to the postal mode used to deliver their scripts.

It's an industry where diversity means Denzel Washington. It's not news that a disproportionate number of directors are male, resulting in an inevitable plethora of egotistical, navel-gazing, cock-yanking films like Birdman, Boyhood and Whiplash, that feature women as little more than glorified set design.